Too Late
by Khylea
Summary: Logan and Storm try to stop a suicidal mutant from taking her own life.


Too Late

  
  


by Khylea

Summary: Logan and Storm try to stop a suicidal mutant from taking her own life.

  
  


Characters: Logan, Storm, the Professor, and a character of my own creation. (Now THERE'S a new one. A story from me without Scott OR Jean. My my. Will wonders never cease to happen.)

  
  


Disclaimer: I do not own Logan (although were he to ask me, I would certainly become his love slave), Storm, the Professor, etc etc. I am using them without permission, making no money, yada yada yada. We all know the drill. I do, however, own the DVD, the soundtrack, the book, a bunch of comics, several collectibles, etc etc. And since I have made no money off my fics, you're still WAY ahead in the money game, Marvel and Mr. Lee, so why would you want any recompense from me for playing with your toys? Hey, I'm a lot nicer than some people. At least I'm always nice to the X-men; I never kill them or torture them or anything (okay, maybe just a little) and besides, didn't your mommy ever teach you to share your toys?

  
  


Genre: Most definitely angst (I know, not my usual fluff. Hey, I'm trying to broaden my horizons.)

  
  


Note: *Words enclosed in asterisks, like this* are thoughts or telepathy.

  
  


Rating: Probably R for harsh language, suicide, mature themes, and graphic violence. (Wow, you really ARE broadening your horizons, the list says!)

  
  


Archive: Please ask. I'll likely say yes, but I like to keep track of where my stuff is going.

  
  


Feedback: If you need to tell me how depressed you got reading it, feedback to [sl_chester@hotmail.com][1] or ICQ #9936242 or AOL IM Khylea C. Thanks! Please be kind though. This is my first stab (no pun intended, unless you think it's funny, then it WAS intended, LOL) at writing Logan and Storm. I don't mind negative feedback, as long as it's CONSTRUCTIVE negative feedback. Anyone who writes me feedback basically saying nothing more constructive than "This fic sucks, you totally messed up Logan and Storm." Will be laughed at and then summarily deleted. (Well, just your message, unless you say something to REALLY piss off Logan, then he might come over there and delete YOU! LOL) But if you have something useful to say, by all means, do so. All feedback is answered. 

  
  


Author's note: Okay, Rachyl. This one's for you. You told me I needed to expand my writing muscles. Is this expanded enough for you? One last warning: the following fic contains a character committing suicide, rather graphically, I might add. If you don't think you can handle reading this, please hit the "delete" button now. No, I don't think I'm giving away any surprises. The title "Too Late" didn't tell you what happens? Thanks (and blame if you hate it, LOL) go to Rachyl and Erin for the beta. Especially Rachyl if you hate it, cause she said I needed to do a fic with other characters, and write something other than fluff. :) Don't worry, all you fluff addicts. More fluff on the way.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


*Logan, could you meet me in Cerebro please?*

"Stay outta my head, Cue-ball." Though he shouted the words, the mental echo was loud enough for the professor to receive.

*I apologize. I know you dislike this kind of communication. I wouldn't have done it unless I thought it was absolutely necessary. This is an emergency. We don't have a minute to lose.*

"All right, all right. Be there in a minute." He swung his legs out of bed and, not stopping to change out of his sleeping attire, wound his way through the maze of the mansion, finally stopping before Cerebro. The door was closed, but as if it sensed a presence, slid open at his approach, the professor rolling out into the hallway. 

He clearly had been at it a while. His normally pale skin was now pasty white, his eyes were wrinkled with worry lines, his hands unconsciously clenching and unclenching. He seemed taken aback by Logan's appearance. "Next time, you may want to consider putting on a shirt. We do have many impressionable young girls at this school, you know."

Logan shrugged. He slept in flannel pajama bottoms because they were comfortable, but hated wearing a shirt to bed. It always felt confining. "Your fault, Chuck. You said it was an emergency."

Xavier sighed, running his fingers across his temples. "Yes. Cerebro alerted me to a mutant reading nearby..."

"You got me out of bed at two fucking a.m. to go check on some stray mutant? Shit. I'm going back to bed." He turned and headed for the elevator.

"LOGAN!" 

He stopped at the professor's shout. Xavier was not one to raise his voice. The fact that he did now told him it wasn't just some stray mutant. He turned back toward the professor. He looked tired, leaning one elbow on the arm of the chair, supporting his head in his palm. 

"Logan, you know I wouldn't disturb you at this hour unless it was important. I felt a very strong presence, a young woman who is in a great deal of danger. Just before I lost contact, I saw a flash of a gun in her mind, and a feeling of complete hopelessness. I see two possibilities. Either someone is threatening her with a gun, or she's considering taking her own life. Neither possibility holds a promising ending."

"I'm hardly a good person to go comfort some scared girl. People tend to be afraid of me, Chuck. Or hadn't ya noticed?"

"I know, Logan. I know you would prefer a straight fight to something like this, but there's no one else. Jean and Scott won't be back until tomorrow, none of the students have trained for a situation like this, and obviously," he said, indicating his chair, "I can't go."

"How 'bout Storm? Why don't you send her?"

"He is sending me, Logan." He turned to see her approaching, already clothed in the black uniform, pulling her long white hair back into a ponytail. "Are you ready to go?"

"No." He turned back toward Xavier. "Send her. You don't need me."

"No. You know I never send only one person out on a mission, even you, Logan. It's too dangerous. You need someone to watch your back."

"I can watch my own back, Chuck. I did it for fifteen years." 

The professor turned toward Storm. "She's at the corner of 45th and Jackson. In the Chevron station parking lot." She nodded.

Storm took several steps toward the garage, then turned. "Are you coming, Logan?" He turned toward the professor, who had the same maddeningly calm look on his face. Logan hated guys like that, you could never tell what they were really thinking. With a soft growl, he followed Storm, quickly stopping to change into his own uniform. 

They didn't speak on the drive over, Logan spending most of his time holding on to the door as Storm whipped the car in and out of curves with more skill than he would have thought she possessed. She stopped the car a block away and they silently approached the designated coordinates. No one.

"Logan? Can you smell anyone?"

He flared his nostrils. "Behind the garbage container." 

She nodded. "You go left. I'll take the right." 

"Got it."

They approached the container. Even Storm's non-enhanced hearing could make out a soft sobbing noise coming from behind. 

The professor was right. She had a gun. By the look on her face, she seemed too afraid to use it, but you could never really tell. Those people could often be the most dangerous, because they were the most desperate. The girl heard them and panicked, swinging the gun back and forth between Storm and Logan. "Stop! Leave me alone."

Storm almost gasped at how the girl looked. She made it a point to not judge people by appearances, but she could see that the girl's life must have been incredibly difficult. Even those who weren't judgmental would have had a difficult time not being repulsed by how she looked. She had a misshapen, swollen face, resembling strongly someone who had been badly burned, her skin red and twisted. Her body was small and shriveled, a large hump visible on her back, one leg considerably shorter than the other. Her hands ended in twisted, curved hooks for fingers, her fingernails long black claws.

"Child, we're not going to hurt you. We're here to help." 

She swung her gaze on Storm. "How did you find me? What did they tell you?"

"No one told us anything, honey. We know you're a mutant..."

"NOOOOO!!!! I won't go back!!!" She fired a shot just past Storm's ear. Wolverine continued his quiet movement toward the girl. If he could only reach her, he could restrain her, keep her from hurting herself or others. Storm took a deep breath, shaken by how close the bullet had come to her. The girl spun on him, pointing the gun directly at his chest. "One more step and I blow you away, asshole."

He smirked. "Won't matter, darlin'. I heal quickly, even from a gunshot wound." He didn't stop his slow progression. She turned the gun away from him, laying the cold metal of the barrel on her forehead. "Fine. Come closer and I shoot myself." He stopped, growling softly to himself. 

Storm swore to herself. *Damn. I hate this kind of mission. I never know what to say.* She took a deep breath. "What's your name, child?"

"What do you fuckin' care?"

"I'm sure you would prefer us calling you by name. Child gets old, doesn't it?" The girl didn't respond. "My name is Ororo, but some people call me Storm. That's Logan, also called Wolverine."

She narrowed her eyes at Storm. "Why do you have such weird nicknames?"

"We're mutants, just like you. I'm called Storm because I can control the weather. Logan doesn't know how he got the nickname Wolverine. He doesn't remember anything beyond 15 years ago."

Logan growled softly at her words. Normally he wouldn't want information about his past being revealed to someone he had just met, but knew Storm had the right idea. The girl needed to see that others could suffer too.

"My name is Kris."

Storm extended her hand, approaching a few steps closer. "Kris. Nice to make your acquaintance. So..."

Kris leveled the gun at Storm before returning it to her forehead. "DON'T!!! Don't come any closer! I'll pull the trigger. I will." Her attention was now fully on Storm, and the weather mutant could see Logan slowly, with the silence of a cat, approaching from behind. She reached out a hand, shaking her head. Her meaning was clear.

He growled softly to himself, but did stop. Storm was better at stuff like this than he was. Best to give her a chance.

"Why do you want to kill yourself, Kris?" she asked gently.

She snorted. "Because I'm a fuckin' mutant. You think I want to go through life as a freak?"

"There's nothing wrong with being a mutant."

"Oh right. That's why the government wants to register us. That's why a girl at my school was beaten up when the other kids found out she was a mutant. That's why my parents hated me."

"Mutation is a normal biological process. Many people hate us because they don't understand us. It's our responsibility to educate them."

Kris' eyes widened in disbelief. "You can't be serious. You actually like being a mutant?"

"It has its advantages. I'm very popular on picnics and at baseball games. No game ever gets rained out when I'm around." she said with a hint of a smile. 

Kris whirled toward Logan. "Do you like being a mutant?"

He took a deep breath. Shit. Chuck hadn't trained him for this crap. "Not always. But there are times I do. I was able to save the life of a friend because of my mutation."

"How?" Storm nodded to herself. This was the first time Kris had actually seemed interested in anything they had said.

"She can absorb another mutant's powers. She was hurt, and I gave her my healing ability. She would have died without it. So at that time, I was glad I was a mutant."

"But you guys both look normal. I'm so ugly. I can't go anywhere without people knowing I'm a mutant."

Logan grunted, looking closely at Kris. As much as he hated to call anyone ugly, he really couldn't dispute what she was saying.

"You're not ugly." Storm said. "Yes, you look different, but you're not ugly."

Kris stared at Storm coldly. "Don't insult me. Do you really think I'm dumb enough to believe that you don't think I'm ugly?"

Storm shrugged. "You're free to believe whatever you wish. But you should know that what's inside is what counts. You may feel self-conscious about your appearance, but I doubt if others would mind. Some mutants are odd-looking, some look normal but have amazing powers. Mutants typically don't judge another mutant based solely on appearance. We're all different from normal humans in one way or another. That difference keeps most mutants from being too judgmental." She reached out a hand. "What's really important is your gift. Every mutation can be a curse or a gift. It's all in discovering what your gift is, what you can do that's special."

Kris shook her head. It didn't look like Storm's words were having much effect on her. "Why are you here? What do you want?"

"We want to help you. There's a school not far from here, a school for mutants. We would like to bring you back, give you a place to live, give you an education."

"Why? Why bother with me?"

"Because each person is special. Each person has something to contribute to the world. Don't you want to find out what your contribution is meant to be?"

"Who cares about a fuckin' contribution? Why should I give a damn about the world? What has the world ever done for me?"

"Kris, I know it seems hard, but..."

"Don't give me your righteous bullshit! You don' t know anything about my life! I was abandoned as a baby. My parents didn't want a freak for a baby; they left me to die in the bathroom of the bus station. I spent my entire childhood in an orphanage. No one wanted to adopt a freak. They couldn't even get any foster homes to take me. Do you think anybody wants to have a freak for a foster child? I finally ran away a few years ago. Do you think anybody cares that I left?"

"You don't know that they don't." Storm said.

"No one ever tried to find me. I tried to make it on my own, I tried to get a job to support myself. No one would hire me. No one will hire a freak. They refuse to serve me at the soup kitchen. They won't let me sleep in the homeless shelters. I tried begging on street corners. They chase me away, calling me a mutie freak, and spitting on me. The only way I've been able to survive is by stealing and raiding garbage dumpsters."

"It doesn't have to be that way, Kris." Logan spoke, moving a few steps closer. "Fifteen years ago, I woke up in a meadow somewhere in Canada, with no memories of who I was, or how I had gotten there. I stabbed the first person who startled me," he extended his claws to demonstrate, drawing a fascinated stare from the young girl, "and from then on, I was basically running, looking for someone who could give me answers to who I was, where I was from, anything. The only clue to who I am is this," he retracted his claws and lifted the dog tag off his chest, showing Kris. "For years, I wandered across Canada, fighting in sleazy bars to make enough money to fill the gas tank and the stomach, and keep me supplied in cigars and whiskey. I hated it, but I didn't know any other way to live, so I just kept doing the only thing I knew, the only thing I was good at."

Storm shook her head, fascinated by his speech. She knew much of what he was saying, but had never heard him reveal it willingly. He seldom talked at all, and almost never to her. He had probably said more in the last 30 seconds than she had heard him say in the previous six months. 

"But about a year ago, I was attacked by another mutant, and taken to the school Storm told you about. At first I didn't want to be there, and after I accidentally attacked two people the first day I was there, I assumed they would kick me out. But they didn't. They asked me to stay, offered to help me find some answers about my past, even asked for my help when one of the students was kidnapped. I won't lie to you and say that everyone will accept you. You know that isn't true. But the people at the school will. We will. That's why the school exists; to help mutants who have no place else to go." He forced a smile that he hoped looked genuine. "Hey, if they can accept me, whose entire live consisted of fighting, smoking, and drinking, they can accept anybody."

"Even if what you say is true, what good would it do me? Any time I would leave, it still would be the same. People would still spit on me and call me names. What kind of life is that?"

"I don't know what kind of life you would have outside the school, Kris. But I can guarantee that you would always have a place there. There are other mutants that seldom leave the school, and they live productive lives." Storm said. "They have friends, they have people who care about them. Every mutant is welcome at the school, regardless of their gifts. I think you might be surprised by the level of acceptance you would find there."

"I've met other mutants. They call me a freak too. Even other mutants hate me."

"That's not true. If you've met mutants who call you a freak, you've met the few that aren't accepting of differences, the ones who are so bitter about being mutants that they try to make other mutants feel badly." Storm slowly reached out a hand to Kris, hoping she might be able to convince the girl to give her the gun. "Most of us aren't like that. Most of us have been hurt enough times that we would never choose to inflict that kind of pain on someone else." She stepped closer. Kris was becoming increasingly negative, and Storm was concerned she was close to using the gun. "Let us help you. There's a place for everyone in this world, mutant and normal human."

"Not for me, there isn't." She dug the barrel of the gun deeply into her forehead, closed her eyes, and pulled the trigger. Storm screamed as the girl's blood splattered on her uniform. 

"FUCK!!! Sonofabitch!!" Logan swore, closing the few feet between himself and Kris in one quick leap. "Oh God, Kris, no!" He lifted her into his arms, feeling for a pulse. He couldn't find one, and the pool of blood was steadily widening. "Shit!" He ripped off his gloves, trying to staunch the flow. Storm bit her bottom lip, trying to keep from vomiting at the sight of he girl's brains visible through the hole in the back of her skull.

"Logan." He didn't respond. "Logan, she....she's gone."

"NO!!! Maybe I can...maybe I can help." He cradled her face in his hands. *God, I'm not much for prayin', but please help this girl. Please don't let her be dead.* 

"Logan." Storm laid a hand on his shoulder. "Logan, please. She..."

"NO!!!" He pushed Storm away violently, hard enough that she slipped and fell to the hard asphalt, slicing open her hand on the edge of the container. He returned his hands to Kris' face. *Please let her have a mutation like Marie. Please let me be able to heal her.* He held her face for several long moments. Nothing. He lowered his lips to her forehead, pressing them firmly into the red skin. Storm sat nearby, watching, the tears flowing freely.

Finally he stood, and gently laying her on the ground, extended his claws. The garbage container took the brunt of his blows as he stabbed and slashed and kicked and punched until he was exhausted, sinking down onto the ground, his head in his hands. 

Storm approached him carefully. "Logan?" He looked up, and she was taken aback by the tears in his eyes. She had never seen him cry, not even when it looked like they had lost Rogue on the Statue of Liberty. She reached down, brushing a lock of hair back from Kris' face, gently stroking her red skin. With a jolt, she felt a surge of energy from the girl. She again checked for a pulse. Kris was dead, but what the hell was going on?

Suddenly she realized. The injury on her hand was healed, and Storm looked up at Logan in wonder.

"What the fuck?" He growled.

"She healed me." Storm stated simply.

"But...but she's dead."

Storm nodded. "Yes, but it's not unheard of for mutants to still have their powers for several minutes after death. They're usually much diminished, but they can still be there."

Logan roughly took Storm's hand, turning it back and forth, looking for the injury. No sign, not even a scar. Kris had healed her as thoroughly as he healed himself, but in half the time. They exchanged a glance as the full impact of the situation hit them. If Kris, with the severely diminished power that she showed after death, could heal Storm that quickly, imagine what she could have done in life.

"She could have healed anyone, from anything, almost instantly." Storm said in wonder.

"Do you think she knew?"

Storm shook her head. "Doubtful. She's about the age when it would have first shown up. I doubt if she would have been so willing to die if she had known." She shook her head again, blinking back the tears. What a waste of a girl who could have accomplished great things, if only she had been born into a world that could have accepted her for being different. "Logan, we better go. It would look bad to be caught here like this."

He nodded, crouching down next to Kris and hoisting her into his arms. She looked questioningly at him. "At least she can get a decent burial. She deserves that."

Storm nodded, not voicing what they were both thinking, that she had deserved so much more. But it was too late for that now. She saw no future for herself and was determined to take her life. Likely nothing they could have said or done would have stopped her. She probably was destined to die this way ever since her birth parents had rejected her. Everything she had experienced since then had only gone further to convince her that death was her only option. They had been far too late, too late to save a girl that was convinced the world didn't want and would be better off without.

The professor met them in the garage, taking in the girl in Logan's arms, the blood soaking into Storm's uniform, the look on their faces. He bit his bottom lip, the tears flowing freely. Even Logan's eyes showed some tears, surprising since he had seen far worse.

"What happened?" he asked to either, or both of them.

Storm opened her mouth to reply, but all that would come out was a choked sob. Logan replied instead. "We were too late, Chuck." He took a deep breath, looking down at the girl in his arms, the girl whose life had ended almost before it began. He repeated the words in a harsh whisper. "We were too late."

  
  
  
  
  
  


Author's final note: Well, I'm sure as depressed as hell now, how about everyone else? :)

   [1]: mailto:sl_chester@hotmail.com



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